by Jason Hartman
SigVR is the Special Interest Group for Virtual Reality. Our group welcomes anyone having an interest in exploring or experimenting with virtual reality. For those of you still unfamiliar with this new ultimate way to percieve reality, it can be defined as a wholly immersive environment. While 'in VR' the user actually feels and thinks that he or she is in a particular environment without consciously understanding that the environment is generated by a computer.
This school year SigVR will be to continuing to work on the PeLViS project, Personal Low-Cost Virtual Reality System. PeLViS is composed of a head-mounted display (two portable Casio TVs and VGA to NTSC signal converters mounted on a specially constructed helmet), two PC's (386-based, with a serial port), and custom-written software. This year we hope to add a body-tracking system using micropower impulse radar technologies, improve the head-mounted display, and add more interesting features to the software.
SigVR meets every Thursday at 8:30pm in 1330 DCL. For more information, send email to sigvr@acm.uiuc.edu or check out our web page: http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/sigvr. We welcome all newcomers, so come over and check us out! <--! placed online 12-4-95 Wendy Van Wazer !-->